I saw a vid a couple weeks ago that made me stop and think. Well, not much, but it just kind of confirmed something I had been thinking. Long and short is that I don’t really sell anything on Reverb anymore. Heck, I’ve got a box of pedals over there that I need to get offload, but I’m not doing it there.
For a while, I had started selling quite a bit there. It was kind of nice to buy some gear, try it out, and then sell it for some other gear. The fees always kind of bothered me because they were a little higher than I would’ve liked. But whatever right? It was an easy way to get into that buy and try and fly circle.
But then last year (or the year before) Reverb started doing the 1099 thing. I’m not a business. I’m not trying to make money buying and selling gear. In fact, since it’s all used, I don’t never took a bath on what I sold, but I never made money on anything. That wasn’t the goal. So I don’t want to be treated like it’s a business and taxed on it. Or, since I had to pay tax on it when I bought it (because I’m not a business), I guess there’s the possibility of a piece of gear being double-taxed.
So I tried an experiment.
I knew that, by the time I was a nice guy and dropped the price and few bucks and then the fees and shipping were taken out, I was pocketing about 70% of what I sold it for. I heard my local GC was advertising that they give 60% of what they will sell the gear for. So I loaded up some gear and carried it to them.
I put together a spreadsheet of what I thought they would sell it for and what I hoped I would get. I actually got a good bit more. So I either guessed low or they gave me more than 60%. Either way, I felt like I made out like a bandit.
I got home and realized that I had gotten almost what I would’ve gotten on Reverb, but I didn’t have the headache of having to deal with people wanting to low ball me nor having to pack and ship anything nor just hoping that when it arrives the purchaser doesn’t decide to say I sent a broken pedal.
So I decided that from now on, that was how I was offloading gear. I have a GC about 15 minutes away, a MusicGoRound about 30 minutes away, and about 5 more GCs within an hour. So, no more selling on Reverb. I still buy there all the time. Heck, I got a pedal in this last week. But no more selling.
Here’s the vid I saw. What the guy describes is pretty much my take. Take it to the GC. My experience has been that they will give a discount on gear that I buy with the trade. So, since the money always goes back into the gear budget, between the little bit lower amount that I receive and the discount on the new gear, it ends up being about a wash.